44 Once upon a time

"Lady Amy?" Prince Horus looks at me as if my reassuring smile wasn't good enough. I guess he thinks I'm lying even when I'm being truthful now, haha. That's a problem.

"Prince Horus… Let me tell you a story…" I say, having found a weird resolve to talk about my 'nightmare' that apparently has been haunting me, letting me think it was a good thing. Prince Horus doesn't say anything and I decide it's finally time to talk. A real talk. No interruptions or lies or one-eyed men.

"Once upon a time, what feels like forever ago, there was a girl" I start, remembering that I'm indeed NOT a storyteller.

"The girl's parents were busy people with different values. They always wanted what they thought was best for the girl, but somehow they always disagreed about what that was… This ended up with the girl always being in the middle of whatever fights they had" Ouch, somehow this is harder to talk about that it was in my imagination.

"This made the girl feel like she could never do anything right. Like she wasn't allowed to do anything at all. But at some point, the girl found the world of books. In those, there was heroes that overcame hardships. For some reason, most of them didn't have any parents, which was weird, but somehow, the girl envied them. If they didn't have parent's, they didn't have opposite expectations placed on them either" My voice trembled a bit, but I felt like I could finally be honest with myself about this… Something that had been hidden in plain sight, with me refusing to see it. Although the delivery sucked, saying it out loud felt nice.

"As the girl could never do anything right, she decided to stop doing anything at all, except reading. Reading and studying. Not only books, but people as well. A certain incident amplified this, something I won't go into, and she ended up losing trust in most people. Except for one person" Aaah, why did I start this story. I knew I would end up with the subject of the Author at some point, but I don't wanna talk about iiiiiit.

"The aut… uhm, a teller of stories? Became a shining light for the girl. This person not only made stories, but made another reality for… the… uhm" 'Made another reality for the girl to escape into' was what I wanted to say, but I just realized how literal that very sentence has become. I don't want to say that out loud! That's just weird! Also, this story is becoming way too serious! Where is my comedy? Being serious is hard! I wanna cry!

"So anyway, the girl found a lot of comfort from this person, but she also felt like there was a line between them she didn't want to cross…" My story seems to have taken a turn, and mostly felt like me talking to myself, figuring out my own feelings at this point. Or maybe it started out like that. AH! I can't figure anything out in this emotional state.

"To the girl, that person was a savior, a friend, a…" Kind of God…. But they don't have gods in this world, so I don't want to bring that word up again.

"A kind of Sun" I say instead, looking at Prince Horus who doesn't react much to my wrong use of The Sun. He simply listens. Making me feel safe in sharing, though I had my worries about it.

"But that person felt like something more as well… Something the girl wouldn't admit to herself. Since she wasn't good enough for that. Since she didn't deserve something like that. Since she would never be good enough for another person like that" My stomach churns as I throw out my insecurities from my mouth into the world, for all to see.

"And what if the girl was mistaking romantic feelings for simple feelings of admiration?" I mumbled in a silent voice.

"Can those feelings not be intertwined?" Prince Horus asks out of nowhere. Huh? That's weird. Did he notice his own feelings for Sir Windsor? Or was he just genuinely confused about it?

"Do you admire Sir Windsor?" I ask innocently, completely throwing away the past few minutes I spend opening myself up entirely.

Prince Horus violently blush in a way I have never seen before. Hmm, it IS the first time I ever directly asked him about Sir Windsor like this, while having just talked very shortly about the gender of attraction the other times, and just not talked about it at all, since I found out they didn't have a word for it.

"NO! I! Was, I was just, uhm, I mean" The fluster of his, makes me laugh a bit, feeling better about everything. What a night.

"We are not talking about me, Lady Amy" He finally says. Trying to change the subject now, are we?

"But it should be no secret that I deeply admire Sir Windsor. He is a hard worker, a great knight, and he deeply cares about protecting the things close to him. Not only that, he is honest, loyal and someone I have the great honor of calling a friend" He says. Huh? This feels somehow familiar… Oh, right! Like that one time he ended up praising me with all of my so-called qualities. It's funny how he gets some fits of total honesty sometimes, with people he cares about.

Huh? Wait? 'People he cares about'?